“Let’s just pretend for a second that I don’t know,” said Joy, feeling more and more submerged in dread. “Why couldn’t he have been on campus on Samhain night?”
“Because he’s dead, of course!” When Joy just blinked at her in shock, Gail rushed on. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the quarry disaster. You were there that day! It’s one of those things you don’t ever forget, like the day President Clinton was assassinated or when the Scientologist colony seceded. Why are you being like this?”
Joy took one deep breath and then another, and tried not to panic. Things were changing so quickly, and so drastically, that she felt like she was standing on quicksand. “Gail, do you remember the council meeting about my dad’s changing the timeline to bring my mom back? Do you remember the decision to do a reboot?”
“Of course I do. I’m not the one who’s forgetting things.” She had crossed her arms defensively across her chest, and Joy’s heart gave a painful twinge at the sight of her friend’s pinched, unhappy face.
“Sit down,” said Joy, gently but firmly. “We need to talk.”
“But morning assembly—”
“You can skip it today. This is more important.”
“But—”
“I’m a mom now,” said Joy, even more firmly. “That means you have to obey me.”
Half an hour later, they were on the same page. And a strange, scary, precarious-feeling page it was. It was an understatement to say that apparently not everything had come through the reboot intact.
Not only was one of Melisande’s lapdogs installed as principal at Ash Grove. The more Gail told Joy, the more frightening the picture became. Joy was shaken to find that Gail’s shy, kind husband had been removed from existence, especially since just the day before he had dropped by the Sumners’ to lend her father a book. And as unnerving as things were at Ash Grove, the ripples spread far beyond their tiny corner of the world. There were different presidents. Different cultural movements. Different threats to the safety of everyone they knew.
And the gaps were some of the most frightening parts. Gail didn’t remember Dr. Aysgarth at all until Joy began to describe her and recount the last meeting. Thank heaven, her memory began to return then, and she was able to recognize the significance of her absence. “We’ve got to find her,” Gail exclaimed. “Maybe she can put things right.”
“What about the rest of the council?”
“The thing is,” said Gail slowly, as she went over it in her mind, “there isn’t really a council as such now.”
“Then we need to relaunch it. This is bigger than we can handle on our own.” Joy was searching for Dr. Aysgarth on the web as she spoke, scrolling through results on her phone. “Let’s gather as many of the members as we can get here today. Mo, for starters.”
“You know Mo Marzavan?” said Gail in surprise.
Again Joy tried to keep panic at bay. It was becoming more difficult with each new revelation. “He should be the head of the music department here. How do you know him?”
Gail, too, was unnerved by the differences between their memories. “He raises prize roses,” she said faintly. “I consulted him once about a hybrid I was having trouble with. But a music teacher? I don’t know that he’s ever played a note in his life.”
“Not just that. He knows a ton about supernatural stuff, and next to Dr. Aysgarth he’s probably the one who stands the best chance of getting us out of this mess.” Joy decided it was time to rally the rest of the troops. She was about to compose a text to Maddie when she saw that she had several from her already waiting to be read. She opened the first one and skimmed it. Dr. Fellowes… no Mo… Joy gasped. “Melisande?”
“Now, her I remember,” said Gail. “Succubus supermodel, right? Has she come back to life?”
“Not only that—she just became Ash Grove’s principal. Gail, this is really bad.” Joy hesitated only a moment before thumbing her father’s cell number into her phone. Despite his fragility, she knew they couldn’t do without his counsel now.
“Dad?” she said, when he picked up. “I need to talk to you about something serious. About—about the reboot.”
“Did something not come through right?” he asked at once. “If there’s been a problem, tell me what’s going on.”
He sounded strong and alert. The relief that washed over her then surprised her with its force. Being able to lean on him again, to share her troubles with him, was an enormous weight off her. She’d been carrying so much around that she couldn’t talk about with him or Tan.
As briefly as she could, she filled in the picture for him. “I think Gail and I need to track down Dr. Aysgarth in person,” she concluded. “And it looks like Mo is in Greensboro. I was thinking maybe Maddie and William should go after him while Gail and I talk to Dr. Aysgarth.”
“That sounds like an excellent idea.” His voice was brisk. With every passing second he seemed to be shedding the mental fog that had been clouding his thoughts for the last few weeks. “I think it’s best that you leave campus as soon as you can, before Melisande finds out you’re there. She strikes me as a vengeful creature.”
It was like having her old dad back, and she found herself close to smiling despite the tension of their situation. “You’re probably right. Will you be able to watch Rose until Tan gets home? It looks like Gail and I will have a bit of a drive on our hands, and we may not get back til after nightfall.”
“Rose and I will be just fine. I’ll call Tanner and fill him in.”
She hesitated. “I think it’s best if he doesn’t come with us,” she said carefully. “Gail and I need to leave right away. And with Melisande back, he should lie low.” She hated herself for what she wasn’t saying: that she didn’t want him to come with them. But she did truly believe that staying out of sight was the safest thing for him.
And fortunately her father agreed, without probing for her deeper motives. “Quite right,” he said. “I’ll do whatever I need to keep him here, where he’s safe.”
* * *
Tan’s life in prison—that was basically what it was—had come to have a routine. In the mornings he’d do a workout: running in place, sprinting from wall to wall, doing pushups and situps and every other callisthenic he could manage in the space he had. If there ever came a chance to overpower his captors and escape, he wanted to be fit enough to pull it off—and fast enough to outrun anyone who came after him.
After breakfast, brought at noon by one of the staff, he carried out an inspection of his quarters, looking for anything that could be used as a weapon or a snare, or any prospective escape routes. Nothing had turned up so far. The minimalist decor didn’t offer much to work with; he didn’t even have a computer, and his phone had been taken from him, so he had no access to the internet or the outside world at all. The first day after he regained consciousness, as soon as Melisande and Raven had left him he picked up the one chair in the room and slammed it against the window in an effort to shatter it, repeating it over and over when the window held fast, but all that happened was that after two hours the chair broke into pieces. Even those were taken from him the next time a flunky appeared to bring him food. Still, he scoured the space, hoping for something overlooked that could gain him an advantage.
The hardest thing was being trapped with only his own thoughts for company. When he thought about Joy and Rose and Steven, vulnerable and unknowing that this spy had invaded their family, the anguish at being powerless almost overpowered him. And every day, every night he was missing out on time with his wife and daughter, moments that would never come again, that Raven was stealing from him. He wouldn’t let himself think of Raven touching Joy. And he tried not to think of Joy looking at Raven with the look that should have been his alone: with trusting love and the certainty that whatever new challenges came their way would just be another adventure when they faced them together.
And Rose. He knew so little about babies. Would she be sitting up yet? Creeping across the floor? Start
ing to show an obstinate streak like her mother and grandfather? He was being cheated of the chance to see all of this. When the pain and frustration got too bad, he flung himself into more pushups and situps, because the only alternative would have been hurling himself against the bars.
The succubus never visited him. With the servants who brought him his meals he tried everything from threats to bribes to flirtation. But they all wore the glazed, blank stare of someone in the succubus’s thrall, and they didn’t even seem to register what he was saying to them. Even today, when the lackey bringing his lunch ventured too close to the bars and Tanner seized him, it gained him nothing.
“Give me the keys,” he ordered, hooking one arm around the blond guy’s neck to trap him with his back against the bars. When the flunky dropped the bowl he held and tried to pull Tanner’s arm away, with his other hand Tanner grabbed the guy’s left arm and wrenched it behind him, through the bars, where he could put a dangerous amount of pressure on it. “I’ll break your arm if you don’t.”
“I don’t have the keys,” came the nervous response, sounding strained because Tan’s arm was tight across his windpipe. “I’ve never even seen any.”
Neither had Tanner, for that matter. Food and water were always passed to him in small containers that fit between the bars. He hadn’t ever seen the cell door open. Maybe it couldn’t open.
But this was the best leverage he had, and he couldn’t waste it. “Then tell me how to get out of here. It won’t take much effort to break your arm, and I’ll do it if you don’t cooperate.”
“An idle threat,” said Raven, strolling in. He was wearing Tanner’s appearance and Tanner’s clothes, including his favorite sweatshirt, an old Killers tour shirt that Joy had found for him at the thrift store. His voice, though, was his own. “You aren’t ruthless enough to harm an innocent party. Run along, Yuri, and tell your mistress I’ve arrived.”
Tanner released the hapless Yuri. Maybe Raven was right. He didn’t know if he would have been able to inflict that kind of pain on the guy even if they hadn’t been interrupted. Was that what it would take to get out of here and back to his family?
“Are you here to gloat?” he asked.
“Believe it or not, Tristan, you are not so important that I would make a special trip just to gloat over you. I’m here to make a report to Melisande.”
“Tell me how they are.” He hated to ask Raven for anything, but his mind wouldn’t stop inventing fears about his wife and daughter. “Are they all right?”
“Stop your fretting.” Change rippled over his face and body as if through water, and soon he was back in his Raven skin, wearing what looked like an Armani suit. Tanner had momentarily forgotten that Raven’s shapeshifting power included the ability to alter the illusion of clothes to suit whatever role he was playing. Now Raven leaned against the wall, folded his arms, and eyed him. “I haven’t hurt them. It would be idiotic of me to do anything to frighten or harm the people I’m observing.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Raven was too much the sophisticate to roll his eyes, but he came closer to it now than ever before. He drew a hand down over his beard as if to gather his patience. “They’re fine, Tristan.”
“I want details. Is Rose healthy? Is Joy well?”
“The baby is perfectly healthy. As for your little wife, she’s short on sleep. As am I.”
But he said it with no suggestive leer. Could Raven actually be getting up in the night to feed the baby? “She’s happy, though?”
Raven sighed. “Since you won’t stop pestering, yes. Joy is happy. She and little Rose are a veritable madonna-and-child fresco. The two of them find more delight in each other than I’ve ever seen in two living creatures, except I suppose for Joy and you. It’s actually rather remarkable.” The usual ironic sneer had gradually left his voice, and instead he sounded almost puzzled. “I know your Joy is just a run-of-the-mill human, but there’s something almost touching about the strength of her devotion. I think she’d do truly anything to protect the baby, or me.”
Me, thought Tanner, not you. But he kept quiet. This was a new side to Raven; maybe he had a vulnerable area that could be useful.
“I’m beginning to see how you became so fond of her,” he continued. “She’s a winning little creature in her way. And the baby is starting to almost become a person—it’s not just a larva anymore. I think it’s actually starting to bond with me.”
Jealous rage made Tanner clench his jaw to the point of pain to keep from cursing at the creature who was treating his daughter like his own. Raven must have seen his resentment, because he grinned. “I can’t wait until it starts to talk,” he taunted. “I’m looking forward to being called Da-da.”
But then Melisande’s voice said, “You’re sounding revoltingly sentimental, my love. I trust you’ve come with more to tell me than this gushing pablum.”
It was eerie—well, supernatural, in fact—the way everything seemed to change when she glided into a room. The air felt different, even sounded different; it was as if an unheard note hanging in the atmosphere rose an octave. There was a charged feeling, as if static electricity was gathering. Once Tanner had found it exciting. Now it brought only dread.
“My Raven has come home to roost,” she purred, and extended her hand to be kissed. “What do you have to report?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “You want to do this in front of him?”
One slender hand made a graceful, dismissive gesture. “It makes no difference what he learns. He’s not leaving here alive in any case.”
All the breath left Tanner’s lungs. He’d suspected she planned to kill him, but there was a huge difference between suspecting and knowing for sure. He couldn’t accept it. Never to see Joy again, not to see Rose grow up—he had to find a way out.
Which meant he needed to learn all he could about what Raven and Melisande were up to. He forced himself to pay attention.
“There is one interesting phenomenon that Joy pointed out,” Raven was saying. “All of the couples in her life are falling apart. Divorce, death—everyone is becoming single again. Is that your doing?”
“In a way.” She looked pleased. “My power is spreading, and everyone is directing their love toward me instead of their human paramours. Now that I have Ash Grove so much at my command, even Cavanaugh’s rose garden is mirroring my intentions and working my will. It is shaping the fates of lovers within its sphere of influence.”
The rose garden, corrupted by Melisande? Tanner felt as if something precious had just been stolen from him.
The subject held only limited interest for the she-demon, however. “Now tell me what you’ve learned,” she ordered Raven.
“Not much. But then, I’m not sure there’s much to be learned. The father has scaled back his dealings with beings like us to simple protective measures. He’s not working spells any more; I don’t think we need to fear any more tampering in time from him. As for what he may have taught Joy before Samhain, apparently she was thoroughly sheltered. And she doesn’t know herself how she defeated you on Samhain. It’s as I told you before, Melisande. I think that night was a fluke. She had scratched you and drawn your blood, she was touching you when you both stepped into the charmed circle—the wrong place at the wrong time, no more than that.”
“And the child?”
“Seems to be a plain, ordinary mortal as far as I can tell. There haven’t been any more power surges. I don’t think there’s anything more to find out—from any of the family.”
Melisande’s eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at him. She was wearing one of her Grecian goddess dresses, draped white fabric sashed at the waist with a silk cord, and she drew one end of the cord through her fingers idly as she studied Raven. “It sounds to me like your efforts have been quite perfunctory,” she said. “I could almost think you’re trying to protect the girl.”
“Protect her! After all I went through to bring you back after she blasted you almost out of existence?
Hardly.”
“Then you must try harder. I need to know that what happened on Samhain won’t happen again.”
Raven shook his head. “I believe it’s more important for me to assist you with your plans at Ash Grove.”
“Raven, don’t contradict me.” Melisande’s voice was soft, but her green eyes were as cold as the depths of the ocean. “I’ve told you: return to your mission.”
His eyebrows rose in disbelief as he stared at her. “I’m not some minion to be ordered around.”
“What are you, then?” A scornful laugh. “Did you think you were my colleague?”
From the look on Raven’s face, it was clear that he had. “I won’t be treated this way,” he retorted. “After all I’ve done for you—I reached through time for you, Melisande. I brought you back into this world, at pretty great risk to myself, I might add, and this is how you repay me? Snapping your fingers at me like I’m some kind of servant? I won’t take this kind of treatment from you.”
The next words were little more than a whisper, but they stood every hair on Tan’s scalp upright. “You will take,” Melisande said, very softly, “whatever I deem your due.”
Under her steady, cold gaze, Raven’s face contorted. A ripple seemed to run through his body, as when he had last transformed, but this time his eyes went wide with pain or panic: the change was being forced on him. He gave a gasp, and suddenly he collapsed into his shapeless blob form.
But this wasn’t like the time before. Its surface wasn’t pearly white, but an ugly patchwork of colors and textures. Knee high to Melisande, it quivered and strained to find shape again, but Melisande kept it pinned with her eyes, her face expressionless.
“What are you doing to him?” The question forced itself out of Tanner.
“Teaching my subordinate his place,” she said calmly.
There was a terrible desperation in the way the blob strained outward with futile blunt limbs, only for them to be subsumed again. More and more quickly it strained to find shape. Tanner had the strange idea that it was strangling, seeking form as a man in a garrote would strain to breathe.
Among the Shadows (The Ash Grove Chronicles) Page 23